1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to communications devices, electronic apparatuses, information processing systems, application executing methods, and recording media, and more particularly to a communications device that executes an application related to an electronic apparatus, an electronic apparatus capable of executing the application, an information processing system including the communications device and the electronic apparatus, an application executing method, and a recording medium on which is recorded a program for causing a computer to execute the method.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, there has been a technique that enables expansion of a function specialized for a business by publishing an API (Application Program Interface) for controlling software and hardware and adding business applications as required.
This technique is also employed in embedded electronic apparatuses such as PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants), cellular phones, and TVs, and their convenience is improved by adding an application as required.
Further, this technique has also been employed in apparatuses that use hardware resources specialized in handling specific data. As a result, even after shipment of apparatuses, users have been enabled to expand functions easily at the operating sites of the apparatuses by development of business applications using the hardware resources by so-called system integrators.
Embedded electronic apparatuses that employ such hardware resources include multifunction machines with scanner and printer engines. While various applications have been developed to be installed in such multifunction machines, Java® applications (hereinafter referred to as “Java® applications”) have been used due to Java® support for multiple platforms and advanced support for networking. (See, for example, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 2004-312711.) Such Java® applications developed for multifunction machines are installed in devices of the multifunction machines, such as HDDs, and are executed using computers and storage units of the multifunction machines.
Unlike general-purpose computers such as PCs, however, embedded electronic apparatuses including hardware resources as described above are severely limited in terms of hardware in order to avoid an unnecessary increase in cost. This results in a problem in that it is inevitable that Java® applications to be installed are severely restricted. For example, the number of Java® applications that can be simultaneously executed is restricted by the limited capacity of a storage unit. Accordingly, even if simultaneous execution of the Java® applications of a scanner, a facsimile machine, and a Web server is desired, all the Java® applications cannot be started, so that it is necessary to end one Java® application and free part of a storage area before executing another Java® application.
Further, such embedded electronic apparatuses as multifunction machines in a low price range often have lower performance of hardware components such as memory and computers than regular multifunction machines in order to reduce cost. Such embedded electronic apparatuses are restricted in that an environment for executing Java® applications cannot be implemented therein because of limited performance of their hardware components. However, there are also requests that Java® applications be executed in such apparatuses.